Goblinopolis, The Tol Chronicles, Book 1 (6 page)

“Uch,” Qrud grunted, “Cherry t’warn’t a praper porker, or I dinna care tae tink what mayn befall. Flyin’ porkers canna be a gud ting.” He opened his palm and swept his hand upward in brief supplication to the gnarlignome god Arfsweener, protector of the world, asking for his purification of this bizarre villainy. From somewhere high above him, Qrud heard a thin scream that grew louder and more resonant until at the last possible millisecond before impact Qrud leapt agilely to the left. The rock on which he was standing cracked and split open, scattering lithic debris in all directions. Qrud was thrown clear by the impact. Standing up and brushing himself down, he peered into the newly-opened crack. There was a glowing fragment of meteorite embedded deep in the fissure with steam rising from it, positioned precisely where he had been standing a moment before.

Qrud’s malformed brow knotted and he stared up at the sky, hands on hips. “Missed me, ya uld sut,” he barked, shaking his fist and making a rude gesture with his multiple ear lobes. A deep, booming sound that could have been laughter echoed off the tortured landscape and died away like the memory of a miserable and protracted illness.

The impact had triggered a mini-avalanche in the crevice where the robot was lodged. When the dust settled, Qrud peered into the opening but saw naught save rubble. The spotlights were broken, one of them separated from its stanchion and lying in pieces on the ground. He heard no noise nor saw any evidence that the robot had survived the experience. Qrud grunted in satisfaction and waved his staff over the rock pile as though he were commanding it to stay sealed. He looked into the sky again, gave Arfsweener a thumbs-up, and then hobbled home, alternately grumbling and chuckling under his breath.

• * • * • * •

“The committee will come to order. Now!”

This last word was spoken with sufficient emphasis that the five other participants seated around the giant toadstool stopped throwing fairy buttons at one another and directed their attention to the speaker, an imposing figure of vaguely elven features, yet stockier and less angular. They were a curious bunch, this Committee for the Restoration of All Magical Privileges, also known as CRAMP: three weather-beaten elves, a kobold, an elderly ogre mage, and a leader of indeterminate race who dressed entirely in black (except for a single elaborate gold earring).

They met in a stereotypical sylvan glade, complete with faerie ring, in which their meeting table was the largest object. They had temporarily scaled themselves down to fit, both for secrecy’s sake and to save money on refreshments.

CRAMP was indeed a secret society. They took great pains to maintain their anonymity and conceal the existence of their organization. The few woodland creatures that passed by during the meeting knew something was up, of course, since you didn’t often see bipeds reduced to this size, but woodland creatures are, on the whole, not really interested in anyone’s business but their own. Most merely gave the proceedings a curious glance and a wide berth.

“Gentlemales...and lady,” the speaker began, nodding to the female elf among them, “Fellow Tragacanthans and members of our esteemed committee,” he paused to adjust his breeches, which seemed to be migrating around to one side of his hips—it’s hard to get clothes that fit well when you’re not even ten centimeters tall. “We are met here today to discuss recent developments in the struggle to restore magic and magical talent to the social pinnacle they once enjoyed in our fair land. Three among us have struck a resounding blow for the cause in Goblinopolis, only narrowly escaping one of the dark agents of technology.” At this the three elves looked uncomfortable and fidgeted. One of them rubbed his arm self-consciously.

A large iridescent green dragonfly drifted up and landed on the toadstool, directly in front of the speaker. It settled and began to clean its front legs. He rocked to the right and left, trying to see around it to continue his oration. Finally the kobold impulsively leapt upon the mushroom and kicked the dragonfly’s thorax, just behind the wings. The insect swiveled its head around and regarded him with inscrutable prismatic compound eyes, then took to the air with an angry buzz. It circled the meeting a couple of times and darted off into the woods. The kobold huffed and returned to his seat. The other participants tittered.

When a modicum of decorum had been restored, the speaker continued. “As a result of the efforts of these three gallant heroes, we believe a dangerous and highly subversive obstacle to our cause has been removed.” The ogre mage raised his arm. “If yer referrin’ to Pyfox, I saw the divil only yesterdy. He was veer much alive.”

The speaker stared at him for fully ten seconds, lower jaw quivering a little.

“If true, this is indeed unfortunate.”

“Ov curz it’s true. Ozervise I wedn’t hev sed it, pootis.”

The speaker turned to the elves, “I thought you said your mission was a success.”

The elves looked at one another. One of them finally spoke up, “Our
mission
was to plant the bomb. We did that, and we heard it detonate. We placed it as close as we could to where Pyfox and his gang were seated. After that we were rather too occupied with escaping to ascertain if we got him or not.”

The speaker closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and then said, simply, “If you will excuse me for a moment.” He turned and walked to the perimeter of the faerie ring, disappearing in a little flash of golden sparkling luminescence. A few seconds later an agonized warbling drifted across the toadstool from somewhere off in the woods. The speaker reappeared shortly thereafter and resumed his position behind the improvised acorn shell lectern. He seemed to be about a centimeter taller than before. The other members of CRAMP tried to look nonchalant, drumming their fingers and whistling.

The speaker lifted his head and attempted to regain a somewhat dignified air, despite the sea of raised eyebrows facing him. He paused for a few moments, pretending to shuffle his nonexistent lecture notes, and finally cleared his throat to speak.

“It appears our itinerary is not quite so far along as I had believed. However, we shall not allow this minor setback to deter us in our struggle. We shall overcome!” He paused again, looking through his notes.

“You said you planted ‘the bomb.’ What about the backup device?”

An elf who hadn’t spoken to this point piped up, “I dropped that one near a goblin we saw leaving the pub after the first device detonated. He looked like he might be in cahoots with Pyfox.”

“
Looked like
? Did you observe him actually talk to or associate with Pyfox in any way?”

“No. But he was in the pub at the same time. He could have been an accomplice.”

“And of course,” added one of his compatriots, “he
was
a goblin.”

The speaker eyed him with a frown. “Please do not target any more unauthorized civilians. It makes for bad public relations.”

A strange whooshing sound at this moment was followed immediately by a loud splat that shook the toadstool like an earthquake. An enormous deluge of thick white fluid splashed up and out, very nearly suffocating CRAMP
in toto
. As they gasped and thrashed about in the foul-smelling muck, they glimpsed high above them a large sea-avian soaring gracefully back toward the ocean. At a lower altitude they saw the green dragonfly circle twice and disappear. It seemed as though a thin reedy laugh floated gently on the wind from its direction.

“I ne’er did take to those wee green beasties,” muttered the kobold.

Chapter Six:
A Magical Beast

T
ol stared at the report on his desk. It was giving him a colossal headache—but with a head the size of a goblin’s that is about the only kind of headache there is to get. He cradled his throbbing supraorbital ridges in his hands and tried to make sense of the words. “Forensic examination of the explosive residue indicates that the device was composed of an outer shell of finely ground carbonaceous material enclosing a phase-transduction hypermagical thermal core.” This last term was giving him trouble. He read it out loud slowly, trying to pronounce all of the words, one syllable at a time. It was rough going.

He stood up and paced in small circles in his cramped office, puzzling over the report. Three elves had planted a magical bomb wrapped in a jacket of charcoal outside a tavern. It had killed six people and injured thirteen more, covering everyone else in the vicinity in a fine spray of something like pencil lead. No one claimed credit, and no obvious motive for the act existed. He had tracked the elves to a park, at which point they had apparently escaped via a quantum portal—not an easy thing to come by in Goblinopolis, or even all of Tragacanth, for that matter. The peculiar mix of magic and technology left him uneasy—most folks were in the habit of employing one or the other almost exclusively. Except for a Magineer, of course, but it was ludicrous even to speculate that one of those could be in any way involved in this sordid episode. They simply didn’t have time or motivation. Besides, the only member of that illustrious order allowed in the capitol sector was Cromalin, the Loca Magineer. A Goblin of his lofty stature simply didn’t get mixed up with petty plots of this sort. It wasn’t even worth considering. Tol wondered why he wasn’t convinced.

He suddenly felt a bit peckish and decided to go out for a bite. He grabbed his overjack off the rack and noticed for the first time that there was a long vertical slit in the fabric just below the shoulder blades. He scratched his head and wondered where
that
had come from. Examining the tear more closely, he found a flake of thick green paint adhering to the lip of the opening. A dim, fuzzy memory of the events following the pub bombing floated tantalizingly on the edge of perception. He seemed to remember things flying through the air, things possessed of the same lurid green as the paint chip. He recalled two shining spots that he at length identified as eyes. Gradually the gourd-induced obfuscation began to peel back.

With a start, Tol suddenly remembered the greasy package and the explosion that had torn apart the trash receptacle. It had clearly been meant for him. He hadn’t even mentioned that incident in his report, mostly because he’d forgotten about it in the gourd aftermath. Someone had tried to blow him up. Was it connected to the bombing of the
Balrog
? What were the eyes he was remembering? It was hard to discern between actual memory and drug fantasy, but something about the clarity of those eyes led him to believe they were more than simply figments of a pharmacological hallucination.

He headed out the Precinct door and down the block towards his favorite deli. They had a triple-decker spumefish sandwich to die for. The night was cold and clear, with two bright moons overhead and a third just setting. Despite his recent struggle with recovered memories, Tol was in a decent mood. He started to whistle, but only got about three notes out before something slammed him very hard from behind, just above the superior ischial crest. He stumbled and went sprawling on his face, but rolled and came back up in a crouch, disruptor in hand.

There was nothing there. Tol frowned and rubbed his torn elbow. Well,
something
had sure hit him. That was no smekkin’ hallucination, he thought, looking at the blue-green blood splatter on the sidewalk.
His
blood.

There was no evidence of any physical projectile. Was this some sort of magical missile attack? Nope, the aura was wrong for that. No trails, no residual harmonics. He sniffed the night air. There was a strong scent here, but it wasn’t one he’d ever encountered before. It was feral, animal, yet strangely exotic. Arcane, in fact. A magical beast, then. If so, where was the thing now? Remembering the force of the blow with a wince, Tol shrank back into the wall of a building to guard against another rear assault.

The night was still and moist. Only the ambient sounds of Goblinopolis could be heard: a steady drone of nocturnal commerce punctuated by the occasional shout or hollow metallic clang. Every so often a less easily identifiable noise echoed across the urban landscape, but Tol had learned to ignore these in a city of several million creatures of a variety of races and cultural traditions. To do otherwise would be to invite raving paranoia, and Tol already had the regulation ration of that.

The strange scent suddenly grew stronger. Tol snapped into a defensive posture, every nerve tingling. He scanned the streets carefully, but the only movement was from a scavenging darkcrow, moving down the gutter looking for scraps. It scarcely noticed Tol, intent as it was on locating a meal. He watched it pecking along, feeling reassured by its apparent lack of concern. The avian suddenly stopped, tilting its head and casting an unblinking eye up at Tol, as though startled by something above and behind him. Without warning it bolted into the air, screaming an alarm call.

Something very heavy dropped on Tol’s shoulders as if from a great height. It drove him to his knees and then forward before leaping off and disappearing into the shadows with blinding speed. Definitely animate, he thought through the curtain of pain from his spinal column, knees, and hands. This must be what it’s like to be a stuntgoblin’s landing pad.